The Normals: Not Blind
by AlcatrazOutpatient
Summary: Spin-off of The Others series. In which Duke Devlin starts to connect the dots and concludes that there is something very wrong with the Bakura twins. Cheershipping, Lateshipping. Slight spoilers to The Others. Mentions of Fem!Atem


**The Normals: Not Blind**

**Disclaimer: **Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. All names were changed to the characters of this fandom in order to protect the real people involved in the following incidents.

**Warning:** Mentions of underaged sex and incestuous relationships. Also, there are spoilers to the end of The Others: The First Year

* * *

><p>"<em>All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible."<br>- Leon Strauss_

The first time that Duke Devlin sees 'the freak' (as he is later dubbed), it's in his ninth grade gym class. The boy is several months late from the start of term and looks absolutely ridiculous. Duke had never seen someone with white hair or red eyes before, let alone someone with skin _that_ pale. His gym uniform is far too big for his twiggy frame. He looked lost in his own clothes.

The kid's eyes flick around the class, not making eye contact but still acknowledging each person that is there. He seems to shrink backwards when the teacher, Mr. Titus, tells him to find a place on the black line with the rest of the class.

The new kid actually trips and falls over his own feet on the way over. The class erupted into laugher, echoing around the gym. And then he looks up and a shiver runs down Duke's spine.

There was something about the look in his red eyes - something angry and powerful and not even remotely human - that makes Duke want to run away, far away, and never look back. It chills him to the bone just how scary this kid is and he doesn't know why.

Joey Wheeler, the big blonde kid beside him, elbows Duke in the arm. The mocking look in his eye is all too tempting to emulate when Mr. Titus mentions something about dodge ball.

Its sort of an unwritten rule to pick the new kid last when deciding teams, and so he is left standing until there is no one beside him. With his white hair covering his eyes, he shuffles towards Tristan's team. Duke would feel sorry for him, but he doesn't like the way the kid's nose is shaped.

He bloodies it by hurling a rubber ball at his face. And the best part is Mr. Titus doesn't call him on it.

In fact, the teacher doesn't even seem to care when the whole team starts to gang up on the new kid. Eventually, even his own teammates turn on him and the kid is left to run around the gym, trying to avoid as many dodge balls as he can. It's kind of funny – hell, it's even hilarious.

Well, its funny until the new kid catches a ball and throws it at Duke. It hits his chest so hard that he can hear his own ribs crack.

So it was on that day at Duke decided, sitting in the emergency room of the hospital, that he was going to make the new kid's life a living hell.

Ironically, it was also on that day that he meets the love of his life, Serenity Wheeler, as she recovers from an eye operation that leaves her blind for the next few months.

* * *

><p>As for the new kid's sister, Duke meets her the very next day. She stands tall and proud in front of the whole class, announcing her name as Amane Bakura. She looks nothing like her brother. In fact, she's the complete opposite. There's nothing even remotely similar about the two of them, unless you count the fact that they shared a surname.<p>

But there's something different about her, too. Not a creepy different like her brother, but different nonetheless. Duke has seen the changes that girls go through once they hit high school. High school meant bye-bye to pigtails and braids, to when comic books and Pokémon cards were cool to collect. High school meant that girls straightened their hair and darkened their eyelids with make up. It means tight jeans and shirts that showed off the cleavage that had grown over the summer months.

High school meant that girls discovered boys and vise versa.

But Amane looked like she'd been straightening her hair and wearing make up for a while now.

It was in the way that she walked, maybe, or the way that she seemed to glance at me out of the corner of her eyes. She'd give that look to every attractive boy in the class and let them know that if they wanted a piece of her, they could get it.

It was actually kind of intriguing, alluring even. And the thought really popped into his head just then: sex. Sex. S – e – x.

He realizes that cashing in his V-card was now a real possibility and it might even happen before the end of the school year.

He gets invited to a party by a bunch of seniors in May. Duke doesn't dare refuse because this is his ticket to stardom. He's guessed why they wanted him to come over. Duke knows very well that he's attractive and he uses that to his advantage. One glance is usually all it takes to melt any member of the female species into a puddle of goop (he'll ignore that its never worked on Serenity before and that he secretly hopes that it never does).

He fucks Amane from behind that night; trying hard not to say the name of the girl he really wants under him while simultaneously pretending that he sees auburn hair and not jet-black.

As he's lying back afterwards, trying to take everything in as she picks up her clothes and mutters something that tells him that she's disappointed, he realizes that Amane Bakura was trying to do the same thing.

He wonders, for a fleeting moment, who this Ryou person is.

* * *

><p>There's something seriously wrong with the freak, but Duke can't put his finger on it. He blames it on the fact the kid's a total social recluse. He hasn't said a single word since showing up in gym class and that was a year ago. Duke's never heard the kid speak. He's beginning to wonder if he's a mute.<p>

The freak wears clothing that's either too big or too small for him. The shirts went down passed his hips and his pants always ended above his ankles. The fabric is frayed and old, sometimes splattered with half-removed stains. He always looks like he'd walked out of a garbage dump.

Sometimes Duke forgets that the freak is even in some of his classes. He always sits in the back, scribbling away in a notebook. He nearly laughs; no one uses paper in schools anymore. Everything's been wireless for years.

That all changes on a cool April morning during his tenth grade year.

Joey is someone Duke likes hanging around and hated sitting beside at the same time. The guy's funny and worth a good laugh, but he can't really relax around him. He's scared that he'll say the wrong thing and Joey would pick up on the fact that he was in love with the guy's sister. Serenity had recently taken off her bandages and shown her pretty brown eyes off to the world for the first time in ages. She'd recognized him by his voice alone, but there was no hint that anything _else_ had changed.

"Let's be friends," she'd said. "Good friends."

"Okay," Duke grinned back.

Joey is talking with Amane. Despite their odd beginnings, Amane and Duke are pretty tight. They weren't going out and he doesn't feel the need to start up a relationship with her. He had a steady stream of girls ready and waiting for him to give them a spin and she…well, Amane was as complicated as usual.

"So he's your brother?" Joey asks, looking from the girl to the freak, who is standing on the other side of the hallway, searching in his locker for something. "He's so weird. So, is it true?"

"Is what true?" Amane flashes Joey a grin, folding her arms in a way that made her boobs seem even larger. The blonde's eyes travelled not-so-subtly south for a second, before darting back up to her face.

"Is it true that he fucks cadavers?"

The freak freezes, hand halfway into his locker, mouth wide open. He'd obviously heard Joey and is…shocked? Angry? Scared? He wonders if the kid actually does get off on dead bodies. To be quite honest, he wouldn't be surprised if he did.

Joey's laughing out loud, "He's always in that graveyard. I bet he just digs them up and enjoys a cold one. What a freak –"

He isn't able to continue his sentence, because the freak turns around, stalks over to him, and punches Joey in the face.

"Shut the fuck up, you bloody wanker!" Those are the first words that Duke ever hears coming from the freak's mouth. They are quickly followed up by, "Sod off, you arsehole!"

The whole hallway goes silent. And then there is a snort. Amane can't hold her laughter, "Oh my god, I can't believe you still talk like that. No one says that stuff anymore."

"Piss off, Amane," he spat at her. "I'm not a Yank and neither are you."

Those lines cost him, as Joey gets up and kicks him hard in the back. The freak topples forward onto his sister, knocking her underneath him. Amane flips out, screaming and cursing, spitting, "Get the hell off me, you loser!"

Wolf whistles erupt from the crowd and Duke decides to encourage them, "You're wrong, Joey. The freak doesn't fuck bodies. He prefers something closer to home."

Amane's screaming only increases as she shoves her brother off her. The crowd encloses Joey and the freak, forming a ring that I was all too familiar with. The chants of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" ring in the air.

Joey beats the kid black and blue. Surprisingly enough, the freak doesn't have a bruise on his face the next morning. For some reason, he thinks that Joey was the one that got off easy.

There's something very wrong with the freak, Duke concludes. It's not because he's pale or has weird hair. It's not because he barely speaks and when he does, it's so stereotypically British that it's hilarious. It's not because his clothes are out of date. No, it's nothing like that at all.

The freak is just _wrong_. He shouldn't exist – simple as that. There's something so different and weird about him that he should never have been born. And he scares Duke half to death.

* * *

><p>There is something equally wrong with Amane. Once again, it's not like her brother who's so weird that he simply should jump off a balcony and be done with it. No, Amane is a different sort of wrong.<p>

After the incident where the freak actually spoke, the rumour mill took off like a bat out of hell. It seemed like everyone was talking about the kid. Whispers flew around the school, talking about whether he liked in a girl (dead or related), where he hung out after school (apparently, in a graveyard), and what he did for fun (murder). Duke had heard from Amane herself that in the middle of the night, she was treated to the screaming of wild animals as the freak slit their throats and collected their blood. He used it to paint his walls a dark shade of red apparently.

But the problem with Amane was that she seemed to be the one starting a good chunk of the rumours. She'd also thrown herself into relationship after relationship, choosing guys that were bad for her completely on purpose. She'd be the girl who gave random guys lap dances at parties before dragging them off to an upstairs room. I didn't even know if she'd heard of the term 'monogamy' before.

Amane was kind of slutty, actually. And she was doing it on purpose.

She seemed to be completely determined to prove that she was nothing like her brother. But at the same time, she seemed to want to know everything about him. Every rumour, every hint, every detail of the freak's life that went around the school, Amane was there, listening in. There were so many contradicting messages coming from her – wanting nothing to connect them as siblings and yet wanting to know about every moment of her brother's life. They were like twins; one evil and one good.

It hit Duke then that the freak and Amane probably _were_ twins, since they were in the same grade. He'd never realized before.

Come to think of it, Amane doesn't even call him her brother. In the few times that he's been to her house, Duke hadn't seen him in any of the family pictures. He just lurked in the darkest corners of the house, like a ghost from a professional horror movie.

What kind of sister – what kind of twin, for that matter, doesn't hang out around their other half? Amane and the freak hated each other, but didn't at the same time. There was something hovering over them that went beyond their loathing and into something else. Something like regret or sadness. Something that was so foreign yet so familiar at the same time.

Maybe the freak's adopted.

Serenity's started high school and Duke doesn't exactly know how to take that. He's ecstatic that he can talk to her everyday now, but it's the fact that he _can_ talk to her everyday that makes him want to bash his head against a wall.

He's eye candy, man meat, and the guy that every girl wants a piece of. He's into one-night stands and getting crunk at parties. He doesn't date girls; he doesn't do relationships. He fucks them and then he goes his own way.

Except he doesn't want to fuck Serenity. What he wants to do with her is something so much more than fucking, so scary because it borders on the cheesy-ass name of making love. And Duke sure as hell doesn't want to leave her alone afterwards. He wants to come back for more.

Again and again and again.

Something tells him that Amane wants to do that to whoever that Ryou person is. Duke wonders again who he is. An old boyfriend, maybe. Or a crush that never turned into a relationship. He understands now why Amane was so insistent on not seeing his face that time when they were together.

She couldn't imagine as well as he could.

There's something equally wrong with Amane, and Duke has the sneaking suspicion that the mysterious Ryou and the freak have something to do with it.

* * *

><p>There is only one time in his life that Duke is worried about the freak and that's after he and his friends get their hands on some chloroform, knock him out, and then proceed to strip him naked.<p>

As Joey and Tristan Taylor ready the duct tape and Tea Gardner holds the freak's limp body against one of the soccer goal posts, Duke realizes that he can see a bunch of the kid's ribs. His skin is stretched over his bones, making him look like a corpse.

Duke's never needed a job in his life, but he has one anyways. It's there to look good on his college application. His family is rich enough to pay for anything he might need. Most kids in the area don't need jobs either. He knows that the freak has one because on of the girls that follow Duke around mentioned that she'd seen him behind the desk at the library.

He suddenly feels very grateful for his family, for his employer, and for his life in general. Duke understands right then and there that the freak has a job because he _needs_ the money because his parents don't feed him. He needs his job to survive, literally.

The freak doesn't come to school for a week after the prank. By that time, the pictures that Tea had taken of him had circulated the school so many times that Duke has lost count. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had gone viral by now.

The freak returns as suddenly as he leaves, clouding the back of the class in his dark aura. By lunchtime, he has been in at least three fights. One of them was in the middle of a class. The teacher, Ms. Madusa, sat back and watched.

Duke tracks the freak down after school because everyone's got a piece of the action all ready and he just wants to wail on something. He finds the kid in the boy's change room by the gym. He's standing with his shirt off in front of the mirror. Duke can see the faint outlines of where the tape was applied to his skin a week ago. He wonders how the kid got out and made it home that night.

As Duke comes out of hiding, one of the lines glows and disappears. He thinks that he imagined it.

The freak whirls around, teeth bared like a feral beast and fingers stretched out like claws. His right eye is barely open, a puffy bruise keeping the lid shut. There are marks of a beating – several beatings – all across his body. There's a look in his eyes that makes Duke freeze in fear.

Something tells him that the freak, as badly injured as he is, would kill him right then and there if he challenged him to a fight.

"What, Devlin? What? Haven't you done enough?" The freak yells, "What is this time? You and your friends going to drag me out and fuck me next? What?"

Duke doesn't think that the kid realizes it, but he's crying. Tears are running down his face and shit, he sees that there is a mirror shard on the ground. He sees the red angry cut on the freak's palm and somehow knows that had he walked into the change room a few minutes later, he would have found the freak's body instead.

Duke hates the kid – is scared shit of him – but he doesn't want to see him dead. He doesn't want to see anyone dead for that matter. And he knows that teen suicide is a very real topic and that it happens, but it isn't supposed to happen at Domino High. It happened at other places, just not here.

Oh god, he'd nearly driven this kid to kill himself. Would it have been his fault? Would that make him a murderer?

"Put a shirt on and go home." It's the best thing he can come up with, but it's enough to wipe the angry look of the kid's face. He just kind of stares at Duke for an awkwardly long time, looking at him like he's never seen another human being before. He thinks that this is the first time he's seen the freak with a semi-human expression on his face.

Then he just scoffs, grabs his shirt and hauls it over is skinny body. Duke blinks and he's gone, the only proof that he was every there being a broken mirror shard.

Duke picks it up and it cuts his finger. He watches his blood hit the floor, wondering if Serenity will give him a Band-Aid when he visits her later that night. He wonders if he'll see the freak again.

Duke nearly has a heart attack when the kid doesn't show up for school the next day and he's growing white hairs by the second day. But on the third day, the freak walks in late to class, mumbling an excuse and slapping a clearly forged doctor's note on the teacher's desk. There's no way that kid was at the doctor's because he's still limping and favouring his left arm like it's broken.

The freak gets a detention for missing class without permission, but he's alive and he didn't kill himself. Duke realizes just how close he came to becoming a monster.

He then realizes that after knowing him for two and a bit years, he doesn't know the freak's name.

* * *

><p>There is only one time in his life that he's really worried about Amane and that's when the freak starts smiling. It's not a creepy smile or a deranged one. It's not even an I'm-gonna-rip-your-throat-out-with-my-<em>teeth<em> smile (and yes, he's seen a few of those). It's a smile. A genuinely happy smile. The freak is actually humming an upbeat tune under his breath.

And Amane is livid.

"I can't _believe_ him!" She shouts, "How come he got into this stupid school and I didn't? He's failing most of his courses, anyways. Why would they be interested in him?"

She screams until the teacher comes in, announcing her brother's plans to go to some stupid college prep school for some equality idiotic reason. But Duke's always had a bit of a soft spot when it comes to Amane, so if he sees her brother, he going to teach the freak a lesson.

He positions himself by the front doors as soon as the bell rings, ready to cut the freak off before he leaves. He barely makes it there before the kid barrels down the main staircase and races towards the door with reckless abandon, smashing into him without a care in the world.

That's it. The freak is dead.

Duke confronts him and starts a fight with him. But unlike usual, the freak doesn't back down. He's faster than usual, better than usual. The kid gets in a few hits that, normally, he wouldn't have the balls to even take.

And then he insults Duke, saying that's he's diseased and it's all that he can take. He tackles the freak to the ground, punching him over and over again in the face. It takes a pair of teachers to pry him off of the kid.

The freak smiles horribly ("I'm gonna rip your throat out with my teeth, Duke Devlin" is all he can think of when he sees that smile) through a bloody nose, laughing in a way that tells him that, somehow, he's lost this fight.

"Serenity Wheeler."

And the world collapses around him.

The freak knows. Somehow, the freak knows about his closest kept secret and now _everyone_ knows. He's done for. No one will take him seriously now.

Duke's image is destroyed right then and there. Players like him don't fall in love with plain girls like Serenity. They don't want to be anything more than the guy who's ready to fuck anything with breasts that's willing enough. They don't do relationships at all.

Serenity won't look at him. He beat the crap out of someone because he was pissed. He lost his cool and showed the anger and frustration with his own life that has existed since that god damned party in the May of his ninth grade year.

The freak finds him in the park and gives him a piece of advice that will stay with him forever. He tells Duke that he's _lucky enough_ to know what love feels like and that he shouldn't _dare_ mess up this chance that he has with Serenity. He wonders whether the kid has ever heard a caring word in his life because how a someone be _lucky_ enough to know what love is? Doesn't everyone know what that feels like? What about his sister, his parents…?

Duke remembers the family pictures in Amane's house. He remembers all the conversations he's had with the girl. He remembers the sight of the freak's ribs through his skin.

Duke counts himself very, very lucky.

He worries about Amane, though. Because how can she be living in the middle of that cesspool of neglect and not notice what's going on with her brother.

* * *

><p>Duke thinks that there's something seriously wrong with the Bakura siblings.<p>

He gets his first serious clue, though, when Amane sprains her ankle in gym class and he has to bring her home. Surprisingly enough, the kid knows exactly how to treat it and does it a little too well. Amane calls him on it, saying that the ice and the tensor bandage aren't enough to kill the pain entirely. He's done something and she knows it.

And as the freak denies it, Amane calls him by name.

"What did you do, Ryou?"

Duke's heart stops beating for a whole second. No way. The kid's name was Ryou? Ryou? The mysterious Ryou who Amane tried to imagine that she was with the day he lost his virginity. And Ryou is…Ryou is her _brother_?

…the fuck?

No. No way, Amane wasn't sick like that. She's his sister and siblings don't do that with each other. For a moment, he considers the idea that the freak could be raping her but dismisses it just as quickly. The instant his name leaves her lips the freak – Ryou_, god _this was_ weird_ – looses whatever colour is left in his face as his confidence goes with it. He stutters through an order not to call him by his first name and flees.

Rape is about power and domination and the kid – Ryou – wasn't like that. This was the guy who said that being loved meant you were lucky and that (according to Serenity) wished he wasn't so scary.

Maybe he really is adopted. That would make it all right, wouldn't it? The two of them didn't look anything like each other at all, so they probably weren't related. That would mean that what they could…

Duke thinks about all the rumours that he's heard about the relationship between the two siblings. Ever since the freak started speaking, ever since he fell on top of Amane, people had been speculating that the two of them were far too close for brother and sister. What if they were true?

But – but – but! There were far too many ways that Duke's theory could be proven wrong. He knew Amane and, yes, she wasn't the most sexually conservative person on the face of the Earth, but she wouldn't do what. But, she'd called out for Ryou that night. But, she'd been with so many other guys after the rumours started to prove that she wanted nothing to do with her brother. But, she'd always been interested about anything that the school was saying about the freak. But, what if she'd been trying to prove the rumours wrong when they were really the truth?

But – but – but!

Duke thinks that there's something seriously wrong with the Bakura siblings. And he thinks that it's because they're attracted to each other.

* * *

><p>Now Duke knows that there's something seriously wrong with the Bakura siblings. And not just because they may or may not be screwing each other. No, it had something to do with the boy. The freak. The kid.<p>

Ryou.

He's gotten way more vocal since he'd started going to that other school of his. There was something new in his step, something confident and powerful. It was the way the guy seemed to look at things now, like he knew something _else_.

But Duke won't tell anyone his suspicions. As much as he dislikes it, he owes the kid because of that advise that he gave him in that park. He'd talked with Serenity afterwards and she'd started speaking to him again.

They were talking and quasi-dating and Duke was happy for once in his high school life.

He talks down Ms. Madusa to pay the kid back. The woman was wrong and Duke can't seem to understand how she gets away with it. Teachers don't bully students – not legally, anyways – so why was this happening? Hell, why was it always happening to this guy? Why Ryou Bakura? It didn't make sense.

As Duke stalks up to Ms. Madusa, intent on doing something that will so totally land him in a detention because she's not going to give him one otherwise, he is suddenly stopped by the freak – by Bakura (he's not going to call him Ryou because of all the things that that name drags up with it). He thinks that it's impossible. How could this kid who barely scraped by in gym class move from the back of the room to the front in an instant?

And then, as Ms. Madusa turns and moved towards them, she trips over something on the very _flat_ floor. Duke can't see what it is, but Bakura has an impossibly wide smirk at just screams of mischief.

For some reason, Duke thinks of the mysterious disappearing bruises on Amane's foot. He thinks of the red line on the guy's back that glowed a year ago. He doesn't know why he's thinking about these things, but he does anyways.

It happens again, about a month later when a light explodes over Joey's head and causes the sprinkler system to go off. While the jock turns on Bakura because _that's what he's always done_, Duke sees the look that the kid was giving Joey moments before. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Joey blabs his story to Duke and Tea that night over the phone. Tristan later backs it up since he's not quite willing to believe it otherwise. Bakura could control the ghosts in a local graveyard? What the hell? But he remembers that look and wonders if it was possible.

Serenity comes crying to him the next day because of something that Bakura told her.

"He thinks he's a monster," she whispers through his tears. "What is his life like for him to think that about himself? He's not."

She feels guilty about not being able to help Bakura. Duke kisses her to calm her down. She kisses him back.

It was funny how it was Bakura that pushed them apart and together again.

But there's something seriously wrong with the Bakura siblings. He knows that it's true, but he doesn't know _what_ it is.

Duke starts to piece together the puzzle that is Amane and Ryou Bakura after the girl's infamous break up with Keith. Bakura asks him, pleads with him, to watch over his sister while he's gone and he agrees. He's got a sick fascination with the two of them and he wants to discover what going on.

He's seen the change between the two siblings over the past week – hell, everyone has. They went from despising the air that the other breathed to being with each other at every opportunity. They've held hands in public, had whispered conversations with each other, and even hugged on occasion. Bakura is practically gentle with his sister, loving and caring in a way that Duke never believed that the crass loser from the back of the class could ever be. Amane looked at him like he was something to be worshipped, like he was her own personal god.

But it all falls apart when Bakura leaves. Amane becomes a recluse and Duke is hard pressed to find a way to keep an eye on her like he's been ordered to. She disappears into the school's computer lab for hours on end to talk with the calculator nerds and the gamers that she'd once hated.

About a week after the disappearance of her brother, she knocks on his front door clutching a laptop to her chest like it's her lifeline. She tearfully tells him, "Duke, I think Ryou's in trouble."

He's concerned, but doesn't initially want to believe her. He thinks that Amane is jumping to conclusions, assuming that some weird chick who made it onto the FBI's Watch List is hanging around with her brother. But he can't ignore the facts about the girl don't add up. Something's going on, but Duke doesn't know what he can do.

He calls up Serenity and she sits down with Amane and talks. Amane bursts out crying, explaining what happened to her the night that Keith attacked her. She describes how their relationship had been anything but a fairy tale romance.

"Ryou was right," she kept saying. "He was more interested in getting my clothes off than he was interested in me."

She tells them about how her brother (who apparently was at the party and Duke doesn't remember letting him in) saved her, rushing from the house after the car _on foot_ and stayed behind to distract Keith and give her enough time to escape.

Later that night, Duke lay on his bed, looking up at the ceiling and wonders how the hell that was possible.

Ryou Bakura is built like a twig. Duke thinks back to the gym classes that he shared with the kid and knows that it wasn't possible for him to run after a speeding car; an Olympic athlete couldn't have done it. And then, assuming that one could believe that to be possible, how in the world did Bakura convince Keith to back down and leave?

Duke knew Bandit Keith before hand. He was the type of guy that viewed woman as objects for him to own and getting into gunfights to be 'fun.' Bakura may have fought with him, but there was no way that he could have won.

So why wasn't Keith back?

Unless…no. No way. Oh…oh god…

Duke sits up so fast that he's dizzy for a few seconds. He remembers what Bakura told him about that night.

"I stopped him; made sure he'd never come back."

Keith wasn't going to come back. Ever. Because Bakura _killed_ him.

He's practically hyperventilating by the time that he figures that bit out. Bandit Keith was dead and it was Bakura's fault. Oh god!

The first chance he gets he confronts Bakura. He gets himself invited to one of Mrs. Bakura's block parties and tracks the kid down. He's surprisingly good at hiding in plain sight. He doesn't even know that the guy is sitting on the couch until he hears the familiar sound of a soda can opening.

Bakura is surprisingly calm, almost joking around with him, as Duke explains what his sister has been doing. He can't believe how normal Bakura's acting. He's a murderer and he's sitting on his living room couch sipping soda.

But the guy panics the moment he mentions the girl from the Wanted List. He obviously knows her, but stammers through a half-assed attempt at changing the subject.

And Duke finally finds two pieces of the puzzle and puts them together.

Amane and Ryou Bakura are in some kind of incestuous relationship together. It's in the way that they look at each other, that they behave around each other. Its wrong, very wrong and he doesn't know what to do about it.

And then there's the other thing. He thinks Bakura is going to that other school – Atlantis, he remembers – and learning how to kill people there. At the very least, he believes that they're pumping drugs and steroids into him to make him into a weird kind of super-soldier and somehow the girl from the Wanted List is involved.

Because there's no other explanation as to how the weedy little kid that used to trip over his own feet managed to kill Bandit Keith.

* * *

><p>Duke finds out later that he's wrong.<p>

There is no relationship between the two. But when Amane leaps over her brother's broken body to defend him against that _man_ and that _thing_, he knows.

Bakura's not a killer. But when he rises to his feet – limbs shaking and barely standing– and points his knife at that _man_ and that _thing_, he knows.

He knows that Amane is in love with Ryou – not her brother, not Bakura, but Ryou.

He knows that Bakura is a protector – and he will die before he lets anything harm the people behind him.

Duke Devlin realizes this and understands, finally, what is going on.

He opens his eyes and sees the truth.

"_You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have concern with humanity and the human comedy."  
>- Elliott Erwitt<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Hello.<strong>

**I was very hesitant about posting this initially and you can probably see why. But before you go on about who incest is wrong (and I've studied law before, so I know its illegal), here me out. I'm not writing lateshipping into this story because I want to kink it up.**

**Amane is one of those characters that wrote herself. When I was initially planning The Others, she was just going to be one more character that hated Bakura. However, she slowly transforming into something amazing - something I could write a plotline around.**

**The thing to remember with Amane is that she doesn't love her brother. She is in love with Ryou and in her mind (for the most part) they are two very distinct beings. Ryou saved her from Bandit Keith while her brother left her to go to Atlantis. Ryou makes her smile while she hates her brother. Ryou loves her while her brother calls her sister.**

**Amane cannot see Ryou as her brother and therefore doesn't see loving him as being wrong. However, there are moments where she does see both Ryou and her brother as one and that's when she gets very, very confused.**

**If there is anything else you want to ask, feel free to do so. As I said before, I'm not writing lateshipping into The Others because of the kink. I have a genuine plot related reason for it. So, I may not tell you everything because I don't want to spoil the ending of the story too much.**

**Until next time,**

**AlcatrazOutpatient **


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